Pop. Politics. Sex. So On.

December 19, 2006

Hey, everybody lies about sex

Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, defended the abstinence-only approach for teenagers... He insisted there was no federal mission against premarital sex among adults. "Absolutely not," Horn said. "The Bush administration does not believe the government should be regulating or stigmatizing the behavior of adults."

The revised guidelines specify that states seeking grants are "to identify groups ... most likely to bear children out-of-wedlock, targeting adolescents and/or adults within the 12- through 29-year-old age range." Previous guidelines didn't mention targeting of an age group...

"The message is 'It's better to wait until you're married to bear or father children,' " [Wade] Horn said. "The only 100% effective way of getting there is abstinence....We wanted to remind states they could use these funds not only to target adolescents."